By Newman Anthony Leevey
Heal Sierra Leone on Friday October 11 concluded a 10-day education trade fair in Bo, the second leg of its two months nationwide campaign designed to promote education and provide affordable learning materials to parents and students.
Heal Sierra Leone is a civil society organization that campaigns for quality and affordable education in the country. The trade fair, which it organizes annually, has become its major event in the last four years.
Hannah Patricia Gbondo, Project Manager of the organization, said they chose to move from the centralized event in Freetown to provide the opportunity for people elsewhere in the country who would not normally be able to participate because of distance.
"For the past four years we have been doing the programme in Freetown, but this time round we want the regions to benefit from it. So we have decentralized it,” she told Politico on the eve of the event in Bo.
She explained that they started in Kenema on September 16th, ending in on the 25th.
The Bo event, which was held at the Shopping Plaza in Bo City, started on the 2nd ended on the 11th of October.
According to Heal Sierra Leone, this year’s events were also designed to commemorate the one year anniversary of the ‘New Direction’ government’s flagship programme of Free Quality Education (FQE).
As always, the event offers parents and pupils the opportunity to buy educational materials like books at cheaper prices, than it is possible in the market.
Gbondo said the trade fair is important in that it helps resolves problems associated with the first phase of the FQE, vis-à-vis wrong information that parents would be forced to pay hugely if their kids destroy books supplied through the scheme. That, she said, discouraged many kids from taking the books.
She said this will also prevent parents from exploitation of book sellers who are in the habit of increasing prices when school is about to open.
During the course of the fair, Heal Sierra Leone officials give talks on the free quality education and provide career guidance to students in colleges and other learning institutions.
From Bo, the team was headed for Makeni, where it is expected to be from October 13th and 27th. It will then head for Freetown where it will stage the final stage of the fair from November 3rd to 17th.
Institutions like the National Electoral Commission, Anti-Corruption Commission, National Commission for Social Action (Nacsa), and Pharmacy Board of Sierra Leone, were among the many government institutions that built booths at the Bo trade fair in support of the project.
© 2019 Politico Online
